Steam for Linux

Is it possible to run Windows titles in my library using Wine in the Linux Steam Client? I have games I want to try getting to work with Wine but Steam won't let me download them as they are the wrong platform.

I don't know if Steam offers the functionality to play Windows titles with a Linux Steam client, but it would certainly be possible for Valve to implement that functionality and since Wine often works relatively well, this might save people the time needed for switching between different Steam clients.

Yeah and I don't think symlinking the SteamApps Folder from your Wine Steam installation into the native one will make them show up in your native Steam.

It does. You'll have to check with each title, but most of the ones I've seen have a launcher script wrapping the binary. You can just make that script execute wine. Of course, you'll probably still have the Steam API connection issue.. but I believe that operates over sockets, so it might even work.

The whole point is to play natively. I have no intention of even trying to get steam going in wine.

Couple of my windows games will work in wine (wow, d3) but those are the last windows games I'm getting. I can run them in wine acceptably, but won't be spending another penny on windows games.

(and yeah, I'm gonna bug the makers of the games I have in steam to port things over if they want my money. I did buy virtually all of the loki games, even the ones I didn't care about, just to support the porting.)

(ok, I just may still get steam games in windows, tough call there) :P

The reason I ask is even though we have a small library of Linux games that is the problem, it's small. The library needs time to grow but until it is accepted, it would be nice to have a way of seamlessly downloading and trying to run the rest of our library in Wine. Instead you feel locked out of your current (and rather large) back library of games. THere are a few in mien reported to work rather well in Linux, but Steam locks them out.

I understand if Steam is hesitant to do this as Wine isn't exactly a guaranteed solution. Some games, especially PunkBuster protected ones, would prove a massive disappointment to gamers if they tried running it in Wine (if it even works at all). But for the more advanced users, it just makes so much more sense not having to install Steam twice.

I'd rather they sort the native side first but if they could at least let us download the Windows title files we could at least have a tinker with them using Wine. :)

WINE inside Steam is most stupid idea at this board so far. Completly pointless and counterproductive. Steam is suppose to bring REAL gaming to linux platform through native ports. WINE is really nice for M$ Office, but absolutly terrible for DirectX games. No matter how strong your machine is, there is always going to be stutter, interface lag (created by WINE translating DirectX to OpenGL on the fly :/ ) and tons of problems (missing textures, messed shaders, low performance - people who claim that 30-40 fps is acceptable should buy glasses). I hope that Steam for Linux is going to kill whole WINE community and Codeweavers, so some devs would be forced to make proper linux ports of their games (/eye Blizzard with ninja linux support through updating OpenGL 2.0 in WoWs Windows client).

WINE is really nice for M$ Office, but absolutly terrible for DirectX games. No matter how strong your machine is, there is always going to be stutter, interface lag (created by WINE translating DirectX to OpenGL on the fly :/ ) and tons of problems (missing textures, messed shaders, low performance - people who claim that 30-40 fps is acceptable should buy glasses).

In practice, this varies from game to game. I recently tried Portal 2 in Wine and I was surprised to see it running at full FPS on the highest video settings. Wine has come a long way too, you know.

And I never want the Wine community to be killed off. I have ancient games and software that will never be ported that work better in Wine than in Windows! And a few more that still don't run in either, but have a chance to start running at some point in Wine...

But I do think the two Steam versions should stay separate.

PS. 30-40 FPS IS acceptable. For gameplay on most games. 30-40 FPS is a point where graphics aren't as nice, and the low FPS might be a bit annoying, but the game is most definitely playable at that point. Which is the most important thing.

Ability to download Windows binaries so we can muck around with them in Wine to make them work.

The games you download would still rely on Steam in order to run, so the solution is to install the Windows version of Steam in Wine and download the games and much around with them that way.